Ray Bradbury's 'The African Veldt'

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The Technology. The African Veldt. The Lions. The Death. Ray Bradbury’s “The Veldt” has a lot of dialogue and a good plotline, and a piece of symbolism (or something that has a bigger meaning than what it is) that is in this story is the screams in the nursery, and I think that the author put the screams in his story to build suspense and get the reader predicting. The screams are all throughout this story, and there are 3 certain instances that the screams mean more than just a scream. The first instance is found in this passage: “He didn't answer Lydia. Preoccupied, he let the lights glow softly on ahead of him, extinguish behind him as he padded to the nursery door. He listened against it. Far away, a lion roared. He unlocked the door and opened it. Just before he stepped inside, he heard a faraway scream. And then another roar from the lions, which subsided quickly.” The scream in the 1st passage symbolizes someone dying, even though Mr. Hadley doesn’t know who it is, the scream indicates that someone is hurt and died. It also has something to do with the lions killing the something that is screaming. This shows that the scream is made by the nursery due to the lions killing the person that the nursery made. It makes the parents uneasy, because kids their …show more content…

A smell of cats was in the night air.” The scream in the 2nd passage has the same symbolism, but has a little more this time, the mother says that the sounds sound familiar, so the person that keeps screaming in the nursery because of the lions may be someone that they may know, because the sound is familiar. This raises the stakes because if it’s familiar, the parents are more suspicious on who it could be, and the kids still act the same, plus, they broke into the nursery in this passage, showing that the kids don’t have a care towards their parents, which could narrow it down to them

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